“Our generation doesn’t have any good songs about fishing to listen to on their way on the highway. And there’s a lot of serious talk going on lately, so I thought it would be nice to make a song that’s kind of light and upbeat.”

The reason why BTS member Jin thought he should make “Super Tuna” was simple: He once mentioned on In the SOOP that he wanted to making a fishing song. This time, he said that, if he was going to write a song that captures the joys of fishing, then he had to do it while fishing. “I did actually want to make a fishing song, but it was really an excuse to go fishing with BUMZU. We went after I suggested to the label that the two of us fishing would make for good content.” And so Jin, with his producer-turned-fishing-buddy BUMZU, visited a fishing spot with a rough sketch for the song in hand and trading ideas as they came, fleshing out specifics for “Super Tuna,” all the while fishing for real. That process led them to the final melody in just five minutes. For his part, BUMZU found the approach unique, saying, “It was the first time in my life I worked on a song while fishing on a boat out at sea.”

The unusual approach worked because the two were filled with excitement and happiness as they pieced together the song. “I already had my mind set on ‘Super Tuna’ for the title but I didn’t find out till later that there was no tuna where we went,” BUMZU explained of a mishap, and “I was filled with worry while we were fishing, but then we caught a bunch of different fish, including big cod, and ended up feeling any kind of fish would do.” Perhaps it was thanks to this easygoing atmosphere that a small miracle occurred. “I jokingly said, ‘Seokjin, you’re a universal superstar—you’d be able to catch a tuna anyway,’ and he laughed and cast his line, and then he caught one for real. Everyone there, including the professional fisher, was shocked, and after that I said, ‘I mean, we caught a tuna—what if we see a shark next?’ And then, voila, a baby shark came and swam around the boat a bit. It gave me goosebumps. I think I saw a halo of light around Seokjin. Haha.”

After the group wrapped up their BTS PERMISSION TO DANCE ON STAGE – LA concert, Jin appeared on his birthday V LIVE last December 4 and “Super Tuna” was shown for the first time, where it was meant as one of his fun events and as a kind of gift. He went into details about the production process behind the song at length, apparently feeling shy, but fans were entirely won over by the unexpected song and “Super Tuna” was an immediate sensation. The song was the top trending song on YouTube globally for 16 consecutive weeks and charted on the Billboard Hot Trending Songs chart for 11 straight weeks despite not receiving a fully “official” release, while parodies and dance challenges of the choreography went viral on social media and video sharing platforms worldwide. By February 26, videos with the #supertuna hashtag exceeded 320 million on key short-form video service TikTok, and major news and other media in Korea and abroad were reporting on the popularity of “Super Tuna” and the phenomenon of its associated fun challenges.

“I couldn’t believe it at all,” Jin said. “I just expected the fans who like fun stuff to just sort of enjoy it and say, Okay, nice song. But I was seriously taken aback and surprised when I saw how the song was doing way better than I ever could’ve expected.” The day after the release of “Super Tuna,” Jin even made an appeal to fans on Weverse to stop with the challenges. “Honestly, I felt a little awkward. It’s really rough compared to the kind of high-quality music I’m used to putting out with BTS, so I wanted ARMY to be the only ones who knew about it. It seemed to me that ARMY thought, I can’t keep this weird thing to myself, and they were having fun spreading it around. So I gave up. (laughs) I saw ARMY say, ‘We have permission to dance.’ So I said, ‘Yeah, you’re right—you do,’ and came to accept it.”

As Jin explained on Weverse, “Super Tuna” was “made to be simply enjoyed,” but making a song that’s just for fun isn’t always a simple process and “it took a lot of effort.” According to BUMZU, although the song didn’t require anything overly technical, making a trot song with comically B-grade sensibilities required an entirely new approach through trial and error. “It was important to have a hybrid of different feelings,” he said. “In terms of the sound, we made it by looking to the feeling of “ParaPara Queen” by So Yoo-jin, then added details specific to ‘Super Tuna’ by continuously trading ideas with Seokjin. So I guess you could say ‘Super Tuna’ falls under the alternative EDM trot genre.” To get into a style that was such a departure for him, Jin approached the song with a different vocal style than usual. “When I sang the ‘palttak palttak’ part, for example,” Jin said, “I would’ve sung a short ‘palttak’ if I were singing for BTS, but in ‘Super Tuna’ I sang it like, ‘pa-alttak,’ to highlight that rustic feel. I must’ve sung that part at least 50 times.” You can feel how he was not only aiming to have fun while making the song but also exhibited the professionalism expected from the members of BTS.

The choreography, now famous for having inspired a number of popular challenges online, involved a similar creative process. Son Sung Deuk, the performance director for the song, said Jin asked for “a fun dance that was simple enough that anyone could dance along to it,” but that he had to go through several iterations of the dance before his own idea of simplicity lined up with Jin’s. “The choreography seemed plenty easy to me, but he said it had to be even easier. Per Seokjin’s feedback, I took out more and more, to the point I wondered if it was okay to remove so much.” Though the whole idea of “Super Tuna” was dreamed up on an impulse and its production was like a fun day at the beach, the choreography had to be looked over with a fine-tooth comb with the express requirement of simplicity kept in mind at all times in order to come across as intuitive. Son said the final version of the choreography benefitted from all that work. “Moves that look easy to a professional can feel difficult for the layman, but I think keeping the moves truly easy made ‘Super Tuna’ more approachable so more people could join in on the fun.”

“Super Tuna” actually first became popular shortly after its release thanks to ARMY making their own challenges and parodies, but it took on a whole different kind of challenge with young children after that. Videos of groups of kids, their eyes mesmerizingly fixed on the “Super Tuna” video as they sing and dance along with Jin, started to make the rounds through different online communities and through social media, while well-known characters, including the “big three” children’s characters in Korea—Pinkfong, Pororo and Cocomong—picked up on the trend and did their own versions of the dance cover challenge, unintentionally positioning “Super Tuna” as a kids’ pop song. On top of trending with the generations and groups most familiar with video sharing, we saw workers in related industries at places like frozen tuna processing plants and deep-sea fisheries, and even people from government agencies like the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries and mascot characters for municipal governments, all join in on the “Super Tuna” craze Jin sparked, savoring their daily lives just as Jin had originally envisioned. That’s the kind of tuna feast we can have when someone with the weight of BTS behind them sets out to bring happiness to the people.

“I barely even had the choreography memorized” for “Super Tuna,” which was paramount to the spread of the challenge, Jin said, “and was busy thinking about the theme park I was going to go to after the shoot, so I’m flummoxed people are into it this much.” But one member of staff who was present pointed out Jin’s earnestness, describing how “he practices choreography whenever he’s got time, even when he’s busy with concerts. After filming, he checked little details like the graphics in the video carefully and offered feedback.” Son added that Jin is the sort who “knows exactly what it is he has to do and quietly gets down to work, no matter the situation or his role,” and the song captures that pristine attitude Jin takes toward life. It also taught Jin a small lesson: “There’s a lot of things I’m supposed to worry about when I’m working, like how well the work will be received, so even if I was doing something I’m supposed to enjoy, it became work,” Jin said. “But ‘Super Tuna’ taught me that, if I try to make that kind of work fun and exciting, I can feel differently about it.” On his previous birthday, Jin released “Abyss,” a track that touched on his innermost feelings. Both it and “Super Tuna” are the artist’s expressions of his everyday feelings and have Jin written all over them. And he opened up about those feelings and experiences in ways he knew fans would be most readily receptive to. BUMZU, who worked on both tracks, said Jin “has an overwhelming desire to share his inner self through music and I could tell his whole body’s filled with thoughts of his fans. I remember how the last thing he talked about at the end of each stage of work on the song was his fans.” This is a man with enormous influence who still appears humble as he shares about his moments of happiness and sadness with his fans. Many people, not just fans, have found means of injecting a little energy into their own lives thanks to Jin sharing his emotions through song. Only Jin could pull this off—the same BTS megastar who followed through on the plan he made while fishing to actually make a song about fishing. Unsurprisingly, he had only a small comment to make about all that:

“There’s nothing grandiose about it. If I think the fans will like it, I just do it.”